Friday, May 27, 2011

Two veteran defense lawyers who mobsters say tipped them off to the dining habits of a federal prosecutor could be in legal hot water.
Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis said Thursday he was notifying the legal disciplinary committees of allegations made by mob turncoats this week during the penalty phase of Bonanno gangster Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano's murder trial.
Basciano - having received a message that then-Bonanno boss Joseph Massino was furious at federal prosecutor Greg Andres - was ready to kill the fed, prosecutors say.
Massino, now a government witness, testified on Wednesday that he found out from lawyers David Breitbart and Murray Richman at a co-defendants' meeting that Andres frequented Campagnola restaurant on the upper East Side.
The information was passed on to Basciano, who was ready to whack the prosecutor at the trattoria, mob rat Dominick Cicale testified at the trial.
Garaufis said he was "extremely troubled" by the involvement of lawyers.
"I'm not saying or concluding that those statements made on the witness stand were accurate, but I think they require some investigation because of the inference that information was passed along by lawyers that could result in the injury or murder of a law enforcement officer," he said.
Richman, who appeared in Brooklyn Federal Court Thursday to quash a subpoena seeking his testimony at Basciano's trial, said he wasn't worried.
"It doesn't concern me," Richman told reporters about the judge's comments, "because I didn't do anything wrong."
Richman said he was summoned before a federal grand jury in 2006 about the Campagnola discussion.